Naked Men Talking: Tommaso Giacomin
We talk acceptance speeches, body image, and how being wacky helps us make sense of the world.
For our podcast, Naked Men Talking, I caught up with theatre-maker Tommaso Giacomin.
In the conversation we talk acceptance speeches, body image, and how being wacky helps us make sense of the world.
You've been nominated in the best director category in the Stage Debut Awards for your work on the Uncontainable Nausea of Alec Baldwin. How does that feel?
Pretty crazy to be honest. I kind of don't even consider myself a director. I just call myself a theatre-maker because I write and make my own shows from beginning to end. But obviously I did direct it, so it was just pretty surreal, to be honest.
The awards are being presented in a couple of weeks from now. Have you been practicing your acceptance speech?
I have kind of in the shower and to my partner just being silly and pretending it's an Oscar. But it's actually quite hard to to write an acceptance speech. I've never done it. I think I'm going to wait until the last minute to do it.
Talk a little bit about how you became a theatre-maker. How did you start to discover and explore that this was something that you were passionate about?
I was always kind of interested in the stage and I went to see some shows in Italy, where I'm from.
I was sixteen and I was just really drawn to it. I started to take some classes, then I applied for some drama schools.
I eventually decided to go outside of Italy and I trained at a school in Paris called Jacques Lecoq, which is a drama school that teaches you the craft of making theatre.
I started to write. I started to make my own shows and direct my own work. One thing led to another.
What brought you to the UK?
I like working in English. I thought, let's give the UK a go. I found such an eclectic ecosystem of theatre - a lot of opportunities. It was very hard at first, but I'm really glad I came here.
I don't think there's many places in the world that are so open to to wacky theatre like I make.
Is is that how you define your style of theatre? Is it wacky theatre?
To me, it's just theatre, but reviewers have called it European, they've called it absurd, they've called it surreal - to me, it's just the theatre that I like to make.
Could you talk a little bit about how your sexuality has shaped your career?
I grew up in a very conservative family. Obviously, I was a gay kid that wanted to do ballet.
I eventually came out came out when I was sixteen. I embraced who I am and the things I liked. I never really let my sexuality define me, but I'm so glad that I'm gay.
What about your relationship with your body?
In theatre, we use a lot of our body, we use a lot of our physicality - body shapes are really interesting.
When I started to train in drama school and that expectation of physical performance and expectation of appearance came in, that's where I feel like as an actor I started to struggle a bit. I still do at times - sometimes you apply for roles and you think that you need to change the body or whether your body is right for the character - am I hot enough? Am I muscly enough?
What are today's theatre audiences looking for?
It's so varied in the UK.
I think UK audiences will always want escapism - there's the West End, they go and see their musicals. Theatre is entertainment.
There's also this other side where there's an interest to see real life and what's happening now transposed on stage.
I always want to see the artistic vision of a maker - a writer or a director - and how they feel about the world now or how they feel about the world in general. What I look for is to not shy away from what's happening in the world and to try and really understand what it is to be human today and what is theatre today.
Is the approach you take - whether you call it wacky or absurdist or surreal - is that the best way to make sense of the world?
I think maybe for me, yes.
There's a part in this show where there are three people obsessively cleaning each other and climbing on top of each other while the protagonist is on a chair with a mic - screaming into the microphone, a monologue about his anger towards the rise in the price of ham in a sandwich shop. The whole thing is so out there and absurd. When when we perform that, I look at the audience and the audience is smiling and laughing.
When you put absurd theatre on stage, it makes us see the world even more in a way.
The world is so unbearable and impossible to understand that by digesting it in an absurd way, the audience can feel seen and can feel understood.
What's on your vision-board for the months ahead?
Winning - that would be amazing.
To develop my new show - to actually have time to sit down and write.
Also, I would like to get a directorial gig - to direct someone else's work.
Given the journey that you've been on and the work that you do, are there any insights or lessons that you wish that you'd learned earlier? Anything that you wish that you could tell your younger-self?
Just what I'd say to myself still today, which is calm down. Not to stress and to just trust your instincts. That's what I've been telling myself for ten plus years and that's what I tell myself still today, to not live so much in the future, but to try and live in the present.
Tommaso Giacomin @tommasogiacomin, Italian theatre-maker and director based in Brighton and Artistic Director of @tgworkstheatre at www.tgworkstheatre.com/ , has been nominated for a Stage Debut Award.
Gareth Johnson